Scot Mist
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
Despite efforts to create a safe environment to see out the pandemic, the residents of the Last Ditch Motel face more dangers than they imagined possible in this hilarious yet claustrophobic mystery.
March 2020 and Operation Cocker is a go! The owners of the Last Ditch Motel, with a little help from their friend Lexy Campbell, are preparing to support one another through the oncoming lockdown, offering the motel’s spare rooms to a select few from the local area in need of sanctuary.
While the newbies are settling in, an ambiguous banner appears demanding one of them return home. But who is it for? Lexy and her friends put a plan into action to ward off the perpetrator, but the very next night, a resident disappears and a message scrawled in human blood is found.
As California shuts down, the Last Ditchers make another gruesome discovery. They tried to create a haven but now it seems as if everyone’s in danger. Is the motel under attack from someone on the outside? Scary as that is, the alternative is worse by far.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in March 2020, Agatha winner McPherson's fine fourth Last Ditch mystery (after 2021's Scot on the Rocks) uses the restrictions and free-floating anxiety of the early Covid period—school closures, toilet paper hoarding, lockdowns—to good and often comic effect. Kathi, owner of the Last Ditch Motel in Cuento, Calif., and "a serious, clinical, lifelong germaphobe," is afraid that the government may commandeer the place and fill it with potentially infected people. As a preemptive strike, Kathi lets her motel regulars convince her to occupy the empty rooms with vulnerable seniors, dependents of first responders, and people in danger of domestic abuse, "in case the governor issues a Don't Budge order." When one of the newcomers vanishes, leaving her room awash with blood, Scot transplant Lexy Campbell notes, "How were we to know how long we'd all be banged up together in the Last Ditch like some sitcom slash commune slash cult? And how could we have guessed that one of us wouldn't make it out alive?" The ragtag collection of motel guests pitch in, each in their own way, to uncover the truth while trying not to break Covid protocol. Clever turns of phrase and witty observations fuel this fast and funny novel. Hopefully, Lexy will be back soon.
